Improving Quality
and Financial Results

primaris flame Pressure Ulcer Prevention

Starting in August, 2008, Primaris began a three-year project to collaborate with Missouri hospitals to reduce pressure ulcers.

Pressure ulcers are a significant problem for people of all ages and across all health care settings, as well as a significant source of pain and human suffering. Multiple factors put individuals at risk for developing a pressure ulcer, including immobility, chronic illness, incontinence, poor nutrition, altered level of consciousness, altered sensory perception and a history of having pressure ulcers.

Pressure ulcers have been associated with an extended length of stay and mortality. In, fact nearly 60,000 hospital patients die each year from complications related to pressure ulcers. The cost of treating a single full-thickness pressure ulcer can be as high as $70,000 with the total cost for treatment of pressure ulcers in the US at $11 billion per year.

Although pressure ulcers are preventable, the prevalence in health care facilities is high. Pressure ulcer rates vary considerably by clinical setting – ranging from 0.4% to 38% in acute care, from 2.2% to 23.9% in long-term care and from 0% to 17% in home care.

Pressure ulcers have long been on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), but until now, work had been focused on nursing homes. Hospital-acquired pressure ulcers are being added to the mix. Twenty percent of nursing home pressure ulcers actually originate outside the nursing home, generally in the acute hospital setting.

Pressure ulcers will soon begin to impact hospitals’ bottoms line. Beginning with discharges occurring on or after 10/1/08, hospitals will no longer receive additional payments for cases in which a patient develops a hospital-acquired pressure ulcer (not present on admission but present at discharge).

Also visit the National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel for staging guidelines and illustrations of pressure ulcer stages.

Primaris has free quality improvement resources for this topic.